Category: Donors

By: David A. Smith [Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.] Yesterday we sought reasons why celebrity charities so often flame out, from Louise Ciccone’s (Madonna’s) Raising Malawi, which not only abandoned its attempt to build a school but also is entangled with an IRS investigation to potential fraud and tax evasion, as reported in […]

By: David A. Smith What is it with celebrities and philanthropy? Look grateful, honey I have a theory. Put a dollar sign on it, Albert It’s easy to see why celebrities are adopting charitable causes. For those for whom personal brand is the basis of economic value, philanthropy has become […]

By: David A. Smith It must be nice to be given enormous sums, based principally on your self-burnished image for tender-heartedness, and not be troubled by niggling questions about what you did with it and whether anybody was better off as a result. Show me the money! You know that the UN […]

By: David A. Smith [Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.] Yesterday we saw that Bolsa Familia, brazil’s signature anti-poverty program that pays families when they keep their children in school, has been a roaring success, measured by outcomes (increased school attendance), cost (much cheaper than direct programs), participation (12,500,000 families), and politics (all current […]

By: David A. Smith Here’s a novel idea: instead of creating complex programs to direct the poor to help themselves out of poverty, why not just pay them when they do? Would you keep your daughter in school if we paid you? As reported in The Economist, Brazil is doing just that […]